The Dedicated Partnership - Internet Promotion

If you've read up a little bit about internet promotion or search engine optimisation before, you will probably have come across the term 'META tags'. You will no doubt have been told how important they are in determining how well you'll do in the search engines. Try to cast that notion aside for a moment. It used to be valid but the search engines have moved on and there are now more critical factors that influence search engine positioning.

So what are META tags and how important are they?

META tags are simply a piece of code that make up part of a Web page. You can't normally see them - they're in the background, and the idea is that you can use them to 'tell' search engines what keywords or phrases are important to your site.

So, if your Web site was for a hotel, you might enter words like 'hotel, accommodation (plus, possibly, incorrect spellings of the word), lodging, etc.' and words that are associated with your location. By doing so, you can help your chances of being found if people search for these words.

But, despite what you may have read previously, META tags are not the only important factor. Search engines like Google, for instance, place little importance upon them and many disregard them completely.

Other issues such as link popularity, TITLE tags, ALT tags and the text that makes up the main body of the pages all play a part in determining search engine rankings. Of these, link popularity is arguably the most important and, in our opinion, of far more significance than META tags. A good link popularity can only usually be attained with a lot of hard work and expertise - and that's where we come in.

If you wish to quiz us further about making your site more search engine friendly, please do not hesitate to contact us.